Google Trends is a nifty tool that gives insight into Google's popular keywords, and it has launched new charts on Wednesday for the most-searched things in more than 40 categories, along with new visualisations of real-time Hot Searches, to show the world's search interest in people, places, things - not just keywords.

Google explained on the official Google blog that Top Charts is similar to its yearly Zeitgeist report in that it feature lists of things - such as cities, movies, scientists - ranked by search interest. Google also said users could hover over a chart for links to embed in their own page or share on social media.

The charts are built on Google's Knowledge Graph and display Top 10 content for each category from 2004 to present, and they notably include more than 40 Top 10 lists and more than 140 time periods. They also get monthly refreshes.

"Top Charts provide our most accurate search volume rankings, but no algorithm is perfect, so on rare occasion you may find anomalies in the data," wrote Google in its blog post.

Google Trends also launched a new way to see trending searches in real-time. In the left-hand panel on the Trends homepage, a link to "Visualize Hot Searches in full-screen" now provides the latest trending topics in a colourful new display. The layout is customisable to see up to 25 searches just by clicking the icon in the upper-left corner and expanding it. Users can select their own region or enter full-screen mode in the browser for more fun.

As for Google Trends design updates, Google said the homepage now shows "more interesting stuff up front" and a list of today's Hot Searches.